2016 has been an unprecedented year in the area of employee performance management. HR leaders are choosing year-long, data driven performance evaluation over employee metrics. Annual appraisals have failed to deliver the desired outcomes and companies no more find them effective.
As already stated in one of our previous posts Why U.S. Companies Are Losing Faith in Traditional Performance Reviews, many organizations are eliminating annual performance reviews as they are not considered to be effective any longer. Yes, the traditional performance appraisals are not working out well, and no wonder, a big brand like General Electric has abolished its infamous ‘rank and yank’ approach.
Amidst all this chaos, only one thing that is giving a ray of hope – the redesign of the performance management process! Re-engineering performance management is like putting all pieces of the employee development puzzle in a way that makes it complete, removing all inefficiencies and shortcomings.
Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) mentioned in a post that three-fourths (76%) of employers have increased emphasis on providing employees ongoing personalized performance feedback and 34% organizations have established a process and/or technical capacity to capture and communicate real-time employee performance feedback.
Redesigning performance management focuses on employee development along with ongoing personalized feedback. After Adobe, Deloitte, GE, Accenture and Cargill have killed their traditional annual performance appraisals, there are many organizations that plan to empower their workforce with re-engineered performance management ideas for 2017. We have compiled a few thoughts to demonstrate how changing performance management trends will minimize the negative effects of traditional performance management. Here you go!
Employee Performance Rating Is Disappearing
Employees work hard and their projects go well, yet they receive ‘met expectations’ with a rating ‘3’. Isn’t this unfair?
Frankly, rating employees with just a number or category ranking can be demoralizing and it doesn’t help employees improve their performance. In a forced ranking system, a fixed number of employees are assigned to specific performance groups (typically low, top and average performers) regardless of their contributions and capabilities.
The main purpose of a performance review is to motivate employees to effectively contribute towards company’s goals. No ratings are required to evaluate skills of each individual and develop their talents. Don’t lose your top performers only because you want to tag them with some numbers or on a rating scale. Instead, involve employees in activities that change them for better and set well-defined goals and metrics so they know how their performance will be measured. In a way, this will surely help improve an employee’s engagement and deliver better long-term business results.
Regular Feedback Conversations Replace Annual Performance Reviews
Annual reviews give once-a-year chance to discuss an employee’s performance. Most of the annual performance review conversations end up in less than half an hour. The absence of employee’s past performance records, lack of well-defined goals and one-way conversations make performance reviews meaningless and unfair.
SAP, Adobe, Accenture and few other have been facing the similar issues where employees are unaware of the performance areas they need to improve on. On the other hand, frequent performance feedback sessions keep managers, HR and employees involved in conversations where employee performance is discussed periodically and the issues are discussed at the forefront. These discussions put an alarm on the upcoming performance issues ahead of time and keeps everyone aware of employee capabilities, workload and skill development requirements.
Professional Training & Development Will Improve Employee Engagement
63% millennials claim that their employers make no effort to train and develop their skills. The lack of training and development opportunities create dissatisfaction and disengagement amongst the younger workforce.
One thing is very clear, that top performing millennials are not interested in continuing with employers who do not care about their professional development. This might be a reason why this generation of employees frequently change jobs. Of course, employee growth opportunities are directly related to attrition rates. The changing performance management processes should lay an emphasis on employee development and coaching rather than on performance assessment.
What Changes Do We Perceive?
There is no way that performance management is going to fade away completely. But re-engineering the traditional annual performance review makes sense. When companies talk about their redefining performance management, what sort of changes are they talking about?
- Continuous feedback
- Transparent appraisal process (Employees are aware what they were rated and why)
- Goals that align with organization objectives
- Feedback from multiple sources (peers, juniors, seniors and external participants)
- Defining short term goals mutually (managers and employees)
- Reviewing and adding employee goals throughout the year
- Focus on employee skill development and coaching
Where Empxtrack Comes In
If you have been wondering who will help you to re-engineer your performance management processes, Empxtrack is right here!
Empxtrack has been designed smartly to incorporate all these innovative and improved performance management practices. Configurable and customizable features of empxtrack performance management software makes it easier to provide continuous feedback to employees, track their goal progress and capture achievements, evaluate performance using yearly performance records and support employees’ skill development.
Don’t know where to start? Register here to take a 14-day free trial.
